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Google Brings Chrome Renderer, Speedy Javascript To IE
A month after we discussed Google's bringing SVG to IE, several readers let us know that Google is expanding the beachhead by offering Chrome's renderer and speedy Javascript execution in an IE plugin. This effort is in service of allowing IE to participate in Google Wave when that technology's preview is extended in a week's time. The plugin, currently in an early stage of development, is called Google Chrome Frame.
...if Google is going to pull the embrace, extend and extinguish routine on Microsoft. I hope I live to see that day.
Google are taking the matter into their own hands and actually putting resources towards improving IE, because they know that MS will not do it in any reasonable way.
Last I checked, webkit browsers other than Chrome for Windows have some pretty hefty security holes and dire vulnerabilities. The question is whether google is dropping in a tiny webkit panel or a full chrome instance within this tab. Their implementation here is very important because they may end up simply shattering IE 8's security model and leaving an exploitable hole in users' systems.
Google better take this very seriously before advertising this on their search and mail pages, etc.
I think I see Google starting a new tag... "letmefixthatforyou"
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
First they ignore you..
Then they laugh at you...
Then you make plugins for their browser.
A lot of the fancy shit you see on the internet today is javascript, the reason much of it wasn't there before was because javascript was so damn intensive to execute. It's nothing like machine code, it's not even like repackaged interpreter language. Javascript is run straight from the script, and it is a terribly inefficient way to do things, but it is much easier to distribute along with HTML.
JS isn't exactly the future of all websites, but it's certainly easier to work with for light effects than flash.
I'll show you why you want JS to run better... go to ebay.com and press CTRL-F5 and count how long it takes to load. Then, disable Javascript execution and press CTRL-F5 again. I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
and IE?
No, but funny you should mention it. The funny part is that Google is beating MS in their own game. They are actually improving the MS browser so that users can properly and smoothly use Google products, and when the user is tied in he will notice not only Google Wave, but also the Google Chrome banners or "suggestions", and later on Google Chrome OS. Instead of trying to act as the bigger predator as traditional software wars, they act as the symbiotic bacteria "infecting" the host. Today IE, tomorrow the world!
Seems to me that there is simply no room for anything else than genious inside Google, but perhaps I'm giving too much credit. Still -- well played Google, well played.
I am the lawn!
It's the 8 hours a week that really powers Google's innovation. For those who don't know, Google employees are supposed to dedicate 8 hours a week of company time to some personal project. Those 8 hours have been responsible for Docs, gMail, Maps, Earth, code search, scholar search, etc., etc. People have ideas, give your employees a chance to explore them a bit and you might be surprised what they come up with on their own.
Google is the wind beneath my wings.
i guess some of us haven't been paying attention.
No, you're right. I guess some of us haven't.
I am the lawn!
Adblock+ and NoScript is win :)
I concur, but it's a depressing state that it should ever even be necessary to add to the work necessary to do less work in a realm where usability should be paramount.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft.
In Firefox, this page shows "W3C Working Draft" along the left side.
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
A lot of the features that Acid3 tests aren't new proposals in any sense; they've been around for years. WebKit (basis for Chrome and Safari), Gecko (Firefox and SeaMonkey), and Presto (Opera) all score above 90/100, which handily beats IE 8's 20/100.
"IE isn't done till Frame won't run."
I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
Slashdot.
Perhaps not as intensive as ebay.com, but without javascript enabled, Slashdot loads faster and generally works better. You could say it's "less filling".
Boy, the people at Microsoft must be pissed about this. When Bill Gates "discovered" the internet back in 1994, the first thing he realized is that eventually people were going want to replace Microsoft desktop software with programs that run on the web.
So Microsoft's strategy ever since then has been cripple IE to keep that from happening. That's why IE innovation came to a screeching halt once IE crushed Netscape. And that's why IE runs javascript so poorly, it's not due to bad programing, it's a strategic decision.
Now Google comes up with a new technology, Wave, that out-performs a whole slew of desktop applications, and to help it out adds a plug-in that uncripples IE. What do you bet there will be an IE update in a few weeks that blocks it?
Is there an ongoing "my Javascript is faster than yours ha-ha" competition in the browser market?
Uhm... Yes?
Javascript is the one client-side programming language that is always guaranteed to be there, on anything that can reasonably be called a browser. Anything that can be called a web application is probably at some point going to care about Javascript speed. And faster Javascript opens the door to some things you might not have thought were possible in a browser.
When looking for a browser, it isn't just speed people are looking for; They want security
Chrome runs each tab in a separate process, meaning it can theoretically sandbox each tab using standard OS techniques -- for example, on Linux, my Chromium does seem to be running things as an unprivileged user, and chrooting them out of the way.
Other browsers are playing catch-up.
add-ons, customization
The Chrome extension API isn't finished, but it's just Javascript and HTML. It's the kind of thing that a web developer could learn in an hour. It won't run Firefox extensions (yet), but it seems likely that it'll have plenty of extensions Firefox won't, just because of how much easier it is to get off the ground.
If I want top speed, I'll use chrome. If I want an all-around great browser, I'll use Firefox.
We don't care, this isn't about you. (And for what it's worth, Firefox is working hard to improve javascript, security, and reliability to match Chrome.)
This is about the 80% who still use IE, and about the rest of us not having to care anymore. I can build a web app that works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Epiphany, Galeon, Konqueror, Opera, in every browser, ever, with minimal effort -- figure an extra 5-10% development time to make it work on browsers other than the one I develop for. IE will fuck it up and add easily 20-50% to my development time.
Doing it this way means that at some point in the future, hopefully, something like YouTube will force IE users to either switch browsers or install this plugin -- at which point, I can forget that IE exists, and let it all melt away like a bad dream.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
fully agree.
1 implement cool net apps and give people an IE plugin so to achieve an almost full market penetration
2 sooner or later an IE update breaks the plugin
3 suggest the users to switch to chrome else the net app won't work
4 profit!
of course microsoft could fight that by making sure the plugin always work with each ie update.
First, sneak your interface into the browser, then you could change the Windows desktop environment, then change the kernel and before you know it we're running 100% open source software.
Google are taking the matter into their own hands and actually putting resources towards improving IE, because they know that MS will not do it in any reasonable way.
Yeah, in other words, pretty much what everybody else has been doing over the last decade with their collection of hacks, their CSS reset sheets, and their javascript libraries.
One wonders what the cost of the lost productivity involved in working with the deliberately broken portions of Microsoft's software is... or how much more productive the industry as a whole would be if IE faded away...
Tweet, tweet.
This whole thing should be very embarrassing for Microsoft... but apparently it isn't. Microsoft is co-sponsoring a conference about SVG, which is being held in Google's Mountain View complex, of all places. That in itself is disturbing enough, but to think that the one company that's prevented SVG from gaining traction on the web is now pretending to be interested in SVG (as opposed to promoting their Silverlight tool as the only *real* solution) is, excuse me, fucked up.
If they really want to help the advancement of SVG, they should finally release a browser which implements it natively. Apparently every other browser vendor can do it. For IE, at the moment, we have to rely on a fragile JavaScript/Flash workaround provided by Google.
I'm really not ranting about Microsoft just for the fun of it; I'm usually pragmatic, bordering on stoic. But I (like many others here) have spent weeks and months trying to work around Microsoft products' shortcomings, and this kind of hypocrisy is making me angry.
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft.
"The publication of this document by the W3C as a W3C Working Draft ...".
(And the first public working draft was published Jan 2008).
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
I don't work off these lists either, but I'm aware of a numer of high profile parts of it, say, the Canvas element. I'm sure Microsoft is too.
IE still has a very enterprise-oriented development cycle
Is this what we call their six year hiatus from actually working on their product?
In the late 1990s they showed they were quite capable of aggressively expanding IE's features, including new if raggedly incomplete support for emerging standards, when they decided it was in their interest to do it.
the bleeding edge feature explosion we see in most open source browsers.
A lot of the features discussed for HTML 5 have had visible implementations for 3-4 years. You could call them bleeding edge in 2006, maybe 2007. 2009? Not without looking pretty silly.
I don't think IE needs to catch up so much as Microsoft simply needs to release an unstable browser in addition to their platform browser if they want to compete with the rest of the non-standard "standards" cult.
The competing products seem to do just fine at keeping a comparable level of stability along with the pushing the envelope. In fact, given how much Opera, Mozilla, and Safari, have been able to do with resources that are orders of magnitude smaller, there's really no excuse.
Except of course if you're talking about CSS 2.1, where it is the best.
Can you defend this claim? Because based on my experiences *using* CSS over the last 7 years, there hasn't been a time when any version of IE could even claim they weren't maddeningly, brokenly worse.
Tweet, tweet.
This is Google at its best, IE is the lowers common denominator when it comes to browsers and Microsoft knows it.
Microsoft is not fixing IE to slow Google down in the WebApp space.
This is Google's shots across the bowel. Basically fix Microsoft or we will.
Chrome was shot one, develop a browser that's half done.
That does the things IE can not do, speed and standards.
This is shot two, A plugin which users hate installing, I need a plugin to use Google Wave? How come I don't need it with Firefox,Chrome,etc?
I bet this will be heavy on Google branding just to rub it in.
Shot three ChromeOS, This is just to piss off Microsoft, Google is becoming Microsoft to beat Microsoft, A one stop solution for software and the OS is just the perfectly integrated tool.(I know this was announced before the plugin)
Google are stepping on all of Microsoft's toes, browser, mail, OS, Office.
It's the marketing war of the century and Google hates Microsoft, the only other company I have seen with a blind hatred of Microsoft was Sun, but Google could win.
Google is the Do No Evil, relaxed, community giving, freebie galore, cool web tools company.
While Microsoft is the stuffy, evil empire,broken software,lax security,uninventive company.
Microsoft took out IBM and Google will take out Microsoft (offcourse they will live on is some form or another, but a shadow of their former self's)
Microsoft is the new IBM big, blotted, slow thinking, and Google is the new Microsoft a small company with inventive ideas.
Google will become the next evil empire and in 15 years Google will be on the road to a slow death at the hand on a new company.
It plays out like a Greek myth, The father will kill the son and so on.....
I didn't say it supports all finished standards. That would be a bold claim. That's a fair criticism. I am simply saying that IE generally doesn't support not-yet-standardized "standards" features.
you mean like the <marquee> element?
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I'd use this new browser to watch Steve's fit when hears google is subverting IE.
I'd would then like to see the video of Steve watching this video on IE and realising that it uses the HTML5 video tag and is in OGG Theora.
FireFox have like serious issues when dealing with JavaScript. I use it in Windows and Linux, just awful for some stuff i use.
For example, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji
If you try to sort by the first column for example (#), in Firefox it just stops responding and CPU is at 100%. This happens in Windows and Linux.
If i use Chrome, it takes maybe 2-3 seconds to sort everything? Even using the development snapshot in Linux for Chrome, just works, fast. So it is not the OS but the implementation in the JavaScript engine. I clearly see the improvement in other sites using AJAX and the like.
This sort of course is using JavaScript. And i doubt it is performance issues as i use an AMD Phenom II X4 955 which is a Quad-Core running at 3.2ghz and 4gb RAM. I really think that is ENOUGH processing power to sort around 2000 rows in a table.